Rumor mill: Pfizer making big R&D changes

What's up with Pfizer's R&D layoffs? The pharma giant announced last fall that it was restructuring its development work. And sources now tell Connecticut's The Day that the organizational changes at Groton and New London won't be announced until January. In a letter the paper obtained, Rod MacKenzie, head of worldwide discovery research, said that it was all too complex to be clarified by the end of the year, as expected.

"Given the complexity of the changes within Research, I have concluded that we will not be able to provide that clarity or communicate them (sic) by the end of the year," he wrote, according to The Day.

R&D blogger Derek Lowe picked up on the letter and added a few remarks from sources of his own, who say that it appears that chemistry will be divided between the researchers who "think up" molecules and those who make them, with no real overlap between the two. And there's a plan afoot to do a considerable amount of outsourcing. It all amounts to some 'profound' changes in R&D, he reports.

- read the report [1] from The Day
- and here's Lowe's blog report [2]

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